


Towels

by Aelfay



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, Flirting, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Towels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 00:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17090528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelfay/pseuds/Aelfay
Summary: Greg's towels are not exactly top-of-the-line.





	Towels

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted over at [Ficlet Friday](https://ficletfriday.dreamwidth.org/1696.html) on Dreamwidth.

“Gregory.”

Greg looks up to see Mycroft, wrapped in Greg’s most threadbare towel. He tries very hard to keep his face and body impassive, even though he knows his pulse rate has gone up, and internally he’s sucking a breath through his teeth. 

He’d offered a place for Mycroft to stay over, after a particularly long, arduous process of getting Sherlock out of yet another tangle. It’s late and Mycroft’s driver isn’t awake, so. It’s pouring - not London’s regular drizzle, but instead a pounding, soaked-to-the-skin torrent, and it had been only polite to offer a change of clothes and a shower. 

But this? Greg had not prepared himself well enough, he thinks, noticing a drop of water dripping down Mycroft’s neck, and wondering what it tastes like. He follows it to the edge of the threadbare towel, and then his mind derails. 

“Oh - fuck. Sorry. I’ve got real towels, I swear,” he says quickly, standing in his sodden clothes. He’d forgotten to take the load out of the dryer yesterday, so the towels weren’t folded on the neat shelf in his bathroom, and now Mycroft, who probably normally uses Egyptian linen spun in Spain or some such, is in his rattiest cotton towel Greg’s had since uni. 

Mycroft stops his frantic movement toward the kitchen with one lifted hand. “Gregory,” he repeats, and Greg swallows, because Mycroft’s eyes have a slight spark in them, and that isn’t fair when he’s in nothing but a towel. “I fear to inform you that the British Government is confiscating some of your possessions.”

“I - what?” Greg blinks at him, nonplussed. “None of my shit was involved with Sherlock.”

“Oh, nothing to do with Sherlock,” Mycroft assures him, mouth quirking. “No. I fear it’s this towel.”

Greg groans. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and then shrugs slightly. “I suppose the British Government is tossing it in the bin for crimes against the natural extinction point for towels?”

“On the contrary,” Mycroft says, and Greg’s really tired, and sore, and wet, and Mycroft’s still got a spark in his eyes and is still standing there in just a towel, and Greg can’t follow this conversation and it’s not fair at all. “I find myself rather fond of it, and shall be taking it home.”

Pausing, Greg tries with his sleepy brain to understand, and pulls a blank. “Why?”

“No fuzz,” Mycroft says, turning toward where his clothes are propped on a chair in front of the radiator, and making a face. “All of my towels have fuzz. Infuriating, and devastating to sensitive skin.”

Greg swallows. Sensitive skin. And then the rest of the words coalesce to make sense. 

“Oh. The new-towel lint,” he says, remembering his blue towel and how Greg had found streaks of bluish fuzz over his body for weeks after he’d bought it.

Mycroft’s lips purse in a moue. “Precisely,” he says, and to Greg’s growing amusement, clutches the worn cotton towel closer. “Now that I have a solution, you cannot take this towel away, Gregory, it’s mine now.”

Greg can’t help the way he grins. “That so? You want my oldest pants too, while you’re at it?”

Mycroft’s scoff is tinged with amusement. “Go take your shower,” he says, and Greg ducks away. 

Sensitive skin. He makes sure the shower is cold, and washes quickly, before realising - “Mycroft?” he calls, naked in the bathroom, shivering slightly, pink down to his belly button. 

“Gregory?” Mycroft’s voice nears the bathroom door, and Greg’s flush deepens.

“I forgot to get myself a towel from the dryer,” he admits, “Could you grab me one?”

There’s a long pause, and Greg looks at himself in the mirror, wondering why, pink-cheeked and hair tousled, dripping on his neck. 

“Depends,” that caramel voice finally says, “Do you need one?”

Greg’s pulse ratchets to double-time. Oh. Oh, fuck. “Ah. To dry off?”

“Surely you have a handtowel?” Mycroft counters, and Greg’s eyes flicker to the one hanging by the sink. Oh, god. And he - but Mycroft could get a towel from the dryer easily - but Greg knows, bone-deep, that if he asked for one, seriously, Mycroft would get him one. 

Mycroft’s teasing him. Bluffing.

Greg licks his lips, and calls his bluff. “Ah, yeah, I do, actually, ta for reminding me,” he says, and hears the sucked-in breath on the other side of the door. 

Gotcha, he thinks, smugly, and scrubs himself down with the tiny towel. 


End file.
